There is a fine line between the hopeless romantic adventurer and the lie told in which to preserve the memory of what you set out to achieve; it is a line so thin that you cannot but help pity and remorse for those left behind to pick up the pieces of the notion and want of derring-do and you cannot help but feel the blur of admiration that strikes home, the sense of forlorn hope that cannot but be helped be seen as glorious failure and which makes the most interesting of stories.

Life is built upon scandal and gossip, it requires no payment, it needs no encouragement, like a whisper in the dark, rumour and the chit chat between people is enough to send misinformation around the world quicker than a click of the send button on a keyboard; it is what the world skates around the universe upon and everybody at some point in their lives actively takes part.

When a writer of absolute conviction is adapted for television by one who shares the same passion, the same feel for the dramatic, it can only bring out the very best in television, so much so that it becomes one of the greats of the year.

There is no better way to round off an outstanding year in cinema that too return to the Lonely Mountain, through a forest of spiders and a tangle with the web that Elvish Men weave and via one of the finest dialogues captured throughout the whole of the Lord of the Rings trilogies and a journey involving a reluctant thief, a Wizard and a gang of Dwarves than to immerse yourself fully into the world of The Hobbit, The Desolation of Smaug.